Compact storage of material pieces such as wood chips in the cargo space of transportation vessels provides greater efficiency and reduced costs in shipping. Various techniques and apparatus are known and have been used for achieving more compact and efficient storage than could be obtained by simply dumping or dropping such pieces into the storage space. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,348,434 and 5,735,319 disclose apparatus for achieving more compact storage of such pieces by using cone-shaped impellers for dispersing or distributing the pieces within the storage space.
However, all of these prior techniques and apparatus have various limitations including complex designs for the dispersing apparatus which makes such apparatus relatively expensive, requirements for substantial unique apparatus for feeding or channeling the pieces to the dispersing apparatus and other limitations which add significantly to the cost of using such techniques and apparatus. For example, the inventions disclosed in the aforementioned patents require substantial, special design, auxiliary apparatus for properly channeling the material pieces into the interior of the impeller in order to obtain the desired dispersal pattern. Many potential applications would require extensive modifications to existing material-handling facilities in order to use these designs.